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<title>Deck The Halls With Ughs &amp; F*ck Yous by murderofonerose (atmilliways)</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28257639">Deck The Halls With Ughs &amp; F*ck Yous</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/atmilliways/pseuds/murderofonerose'>murderofonerose (atmilliways)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>12 Days of Dethmas 2020 [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Metalocalypse (Cartoon)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, And Murderface is a professional notary, And Pickles only made it as far as his parents' basement, And they're brought together by random Chrismtas happenstance, Dethentines 2021, Hallmark Holiday Movie Style, M/M, Metalocalypse AU, Only One Bed, Recreational Drug Use, What if Dethklok never happened</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 19:48:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,357</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28257639</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/atmilliways/pseuds/murderofonerose</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s a big city notary, only in town to clean out his deceased grandparents’ condo.</p><p>He’s a small-town metalhead pot dealer/part time taxi service with no one to hang out with for the holidays.</p><p>Is it fate, or is it Christmas?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>William Murderface/Pickles the Drummer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>12 Days of Dethmas 2020 [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2055183</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Meet Cute</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>
  <b>Dec 22 - Metalocalypse but it's a cheesy Hallmark holiday movie</b>
</p><p> </p><p>I went heavy on Pickles' accent for this and I refuse to apologize for my crimes.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When you boiled it down to the bare essentials, the first half of the letter basically said, “Merry Christmas, your grandparents are dead.” </p><p>Which, William felt, was kind of nice of the lawyer writing to him. He hadn’t liked his grandparents particularly much, for all that they’d raised him ever since the unfortunate murder-suicide that had claimed his parents. Everything he’d accomplished in life had been in spite of them. They’d wanted him to be a hubcap salesman like his grandfather; he’d gotten his notary license and done just fine. They’d wanted him to stay in the same kind of podunk towns they always lived in; he’d gone to the big city and landed a steady career notarizing deeds and titles for a <em>huge</em>real estate company. All they’d done was yell at him to make sure was still alive for seventeen years. Anyone could have done that. </p><p>It was the second half of the letter that was the problem. Apparently they’d had no money to leave him, just all the crap in a condo that needed to be emptied out by the end of the year so the next owners could move in. If he didn’t, there would be a ridiculously large fine due of some truly idiotic wording in the lease they’d signed. </p><p>A quick check online told him it would be cheaper to just fly out to this . . . Tomahawk, Wisconsin, throw all the shit in a dumpster, and be done with it. He had a couple weeks of vacation time coming up anyway, with Christmas and New Years, and no particular plans. Why not go? Maybe it would be . . . cathartic or something. </p><p>William sighed and reached to grab a credit card from his wallet. So much for a quiet Christmas to himself, holed up in his  blissfully undecorated apartment with takeout from one of the best sushi places in the entire city. </p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Tomahawk was pretty much what he expected. Once he made it out of the four-gate airport with a baggage claim so slow that it might have been faster to <em>walk</em> instead of fly, it turned out there wasn’t even a taxi queue. He had to go back inside and call one himself. And it wasn’t so much a taxi service as something called “Pickles Cab” scratched in above the payphone.</p><p>As long as it had wheels and knew how to find the address, he didn’t much care. The dispatch guy had seemed kinda stoned on the phone, but hey, William figured, that just meant he might be able to find some to buy in the area. </p><p>The car was easy to spot because it was the only non-white thing moving in the snow-caked parking lot. William eyed the shitty old Vista Cruiser in shades of drab green, rust, and beat-to-shit wood paneling skeptically as it pulled up to the loading zone curb at an angle that was, frankly, terrible. The driver put it in park and popped out the driver’s side door with the engine still running, spewing thick steam out of the tailpipe in the frigid air. </p><p>“Hey dood, welcome to Wiscahnsin,” the guy called, waving. “Abandon hope all ye to enter here, heh.” He smirked. William recognized his voice as the person he’d talked to on the phone.</p><p>“Uh . . . hi,” William replied awkwardly, hefting his two suitcases, </p><p>“Trunks open. Lemme get it fer ya.” The driver hurried around to the back of the car and opened it for William to toss the suitcases in. He had a shock of red hair trying to escape from his black beanie in all directions, and park-job aside seemed slightly less stoned in person than he sounded. “Wanna sit up front? It’s warmer up here, I’ve had the heat blastin’ all the way here . . . uh, just let me clear some shit out first.”</p><p>‘Some shit’ seemed to be a lot of empty bottles and cans and snack wrappers, but William waited patiently because it’s not like this place had any <em>actual</em> taxis he could call instead. When he did climb in and buckle his seatbelt, at least it was warm, as promised, even if it did smell like pot and stale beer. </p><p>The driver popped back in, stripped the glove off one hand, and rubbed at his nose above a vivid red goatee before grabbing the wheel, “Okey, here we go. I’m Pickles, what’s yer name?”</p><p>“William Murderfasche,” William replied. What kind of a name was Pickles? But . . . it did explain the name of the ‘cab’ company. </p><p>“Murderface, that’s a fuckin’ cool name. Mind if I just call ya that?”</p><p>“. . . Sure.”</p><p>“Cool. So dood, Murderface, where to?”</p><p>William gave him the address. The car pulled away from the airport with a jerk and he stared out the window at passing snow banks and white-shrouded trees, starting to sink into all his misgivings about the decision to come out here. There was a certain <em>smell</em> that developed anywhere his grandparents inhabited for long enough that he hadn’t realized until moving out on his own kept him in a near-constant state of upset stomach. </p><p>“Hope ya don’t mind there ain’t no radio,” Pickles told him companionably, not appearing to mind when William didn’t react. “Tape deck’s broken too. . . . I’m tryin’ ta save up the money to fix it by givin’ people rides and shit. And doin’ some other stuff too, but don’t tell the cops, heh. All the local stations are pretty much shit anywey, all they’re playin’ right now is fuckin’ Christmas songs.”</p><p>“Hm,” William agreed. </p><p>“What kinda music you listen to?”</p><p>“Hm. Uh, what? Oh, schorry. Moschtly metal, I guessch.” He shrugged, shaking himself out of the funk he’d been about to sink into. Usually he would prefer to just be left to his own thoughts, but right now the chit chat was actually a welcome distraction. “It’sch good background muschic for conschentrating on not thinking.”</p><p>“Hey dood, me too!” In his enthusiasm, Pickles gunned the engine and sent the car into a brief skid on the wintery road, but corrected it with an ease that spoke to lots of practice. “There’s naht much of a metal scene here, fuckin’ sucks. What else am I supposed to get fucked up to, huh? People jest don’t get that. Is it any better where you live?”</p><p>William, braced for impact as he now was and would probably remain for the rest of the ride, shrugged again. “I don’t know. I moschtly keep to myschelf, but there are plenty of schtoresch that have deschent schtuff, if you’re willing to schort through all the other crap.”</p><p>“Well, cool. Hey if you wanna hang out at all while yer here, I got a pretty good collection on vinyl. Y’know, if you don’t have family shit to do. I’m avoiding mine due to sort of a . . . landlord tenant dispute. They won’t let me put a lock on the house-door to my basement-room, so I’ve got it barricaded and stopped payin’ rent, and now Mahm won’t let me eat anything she cooks. But it’s cool, I’ve gaht an exterior door so I can still get in’n out.”</p><p>It took a moment to digest all that, but William noted the invitation with the tentative optimism of a guy who’d moved a lot as a kid but never quite gotten the hang of making friends as a survival method. </p><p>But he was only planning to be in town for a few days, get the condo cleaned out ASAP, and go home, never to return. Not a lot of point in making friends. </p><p>“Thanksch, but I probably won’t have time.” He wasn’t looking directly at Pickles, but he saw the driver’s smile drop a few watts out of the corner of his eye. Feeling bad for the guy, he quickly added, “Schoundsch like you’ve got a pretty good schet-up, though.”</p><p>“Eh . . . it’s alright.”</p><p>The conversation petered out after that, and William had no idea how to get it going again. He’d always been shit at this sort of thing. Looking back, it was probably a miracle that he’d stuck through high school long enough to graduate, having alienated, avoided, or accidentally insulted enough of his peers that virtually no one on campus had ever willingly spoken to him. The only social group he’d ever successfully infiltrated was the lunchtime stoners that hung out in the park across the street, and that was because they’d mostly just sat around passing joints, trying to blow smoke rings, and napping before having to face sixth period. </p><p>Eventually Pickles put his turn signal on and announced, "Here we go, Christmas Mountain Avenue. Sheesh, that's a little on the nose, huh?"</p><p>Privately William agreed, but awkwardly swallowed the chuckle before it could make itself heard. As they pulled up in front of the building, he peered out the window at the gray, shitty condo building and felt his lip curl. Fuck, there was a fridge in there full of rotting food and cans of condensed milk that he was going to have to deal with somewhere in there, he just knew it. </p><p>“Is this where yer staying?” Pickles asked dubiously. </p><p>“No,” William said with a shudder. “Thisch isch juscht the . . . family schit I’m here to deal with. My grandparentsch died and I have to clean out their plache by the end of the month.”</p><p>“Ooh.” Scratching thoughtfully at his goatee, he leaned forward to get a better look at the building. “. . . You know, the nearest motel is a ten minute walk and it’s gettin’ dark soon. Yer gonna want a ride, prahbably.”</p><p>William blinked. “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.”</p><p>Pickles made a show of looking thoughtful. “So . . . want any help? I gaht reeeeal reasonable rates.”</p><p>“Well. . . .”</p><p>“And I’ve gaht weed, too,” he added. </p><p>“Done,” William said immediately. </p><p>Well. At least the ordeal would probably be over with sooner this way, and also a lot less horrible with something to blunt the edges (and cover the Smell).</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Complication</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The first day was mostly spent poking around the condo while passing joints back and forth until William glanced at Pickles and asked, “Think we schould open a window?”</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <b>February 11 - Trope Battle: Fake Dating or Only One Bed</b>
</p><p>I was going to go for both, but Fake Dating will have to wait for the next chapter. In the meantime, here's some good ol' Only One Bed.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first day was mostly spent poking around the condo while passing joints back and forth until William glanced at Pickles and asked, “Think we schould open a window?”</p><p>Pickles, who with his beanie and jacket off was revealed to have a somewhat thinning but nevertheless vivid head of red hair just long enough to put in a tiny man bun to keep it out of his face, shrugged. “Who cares? It ain’t yer carpet. Jest tell the super yer grandparents were hippies or had cancer or somethin’.”</p><p>William was comfortably high enough to laugh and point towards some of the pictures hanging on the wall, none of which, he was both grateful and wounded to see, included him. “Do they <em> look </em> like they were hippiesch? No one’d believe that.” But he didn’t bother to head for a window, just kept idly sorting through the piles of old newspapers and unopened mail piled up on the dining room table. “God, I’m going to have to come back here tomorrow with scho many fucking trasch bagsch.”</p><p>“I don’t think the local Piggly Wiggly has bags big enough for that fridge,” Pickles said with a shudder, then plopped down and swiped some of the detritus off the table so he could lay out papers of his own and roll a new joint. “So, what’s the plan? Anything in here worth keepin’ at all? I know a guy if yer grandma had any jewelry worth hockin’.”</p><p>“Maybe.” William paused to look around the room. “My grandpa usched to have a schilver teapot that he got in Korea. He wasch a colonel, did, uh . . . I want to schay artillery or schomething.”</p><p>“Huh.” Pickles licked the edge of the rolling paper to seal it and twisted the end thoughtfully. “Nice guy?”</p><p>William shrugged. “Not really.” </p><p>“Heh. That’s family for ya.”</p><p>He appreciated that Pickles didn’t ask any other questions, like about his parents. High or otherwise, William didn’t like to talk about that stuff, and hadn’t, point blank, with anyone since elementary school. </p><p>Once they’d tromped through all the rooms and made a vague list of all the different kinds of crap that needed to be bagged up, there wasn’t much else to do. William was tired from the long flight, and the pot only increased his desire to go to head for a place to crash, so before long he had Pickles drive him to the nearest motel. It really was close, but he appreciated the ride. Much better than slipping and sliding on his ass down the snowy sidewalk. </p><p>“The pride’a Tomahawk,” Pickles joked as he pulled up outside the motel office. He drummed his hands against the wheel and glanced hopefully over at his passenger. “Buy me dinner and I’ll get ya whatever ya want from the Culver’s down the street. I’m signed up on Uber Eats too, but whatdda ya say we cut out the middleman?”</p><p>William considered, then shrugged. He was definitely hungry. “Schoundsch good.”</p><p>“Cool.” Pickles grinned, and his drumming picked up again. “Twenty bucks should do it. What’s yer order?”</p><p>Having lived in the city for so long, William had developed a fairly robust distrust in other people. He gave Pickles a twenty anyway, because he hadn’t paid him for the taxi service yet so if the guy took off it was pretty much a wash. But twenty minutes later, just as he’d dropped his suitcases and flopped face-first onto the slightly sagging bed, there suddenly was a rapid-fire drum solo being played on his door. The fact that he knew who was knocking just from the sound felt unfamiliar, yet kind of . . . nice. </p><p>They found some old reruns of The A-Team and ate their fast food, Pickles flopping next to him on the bed and wordlessly offering the first hit off another joint. They were hanging out like they’d known each other for years. When Pickles left, he clapped William on the shoulder and said, “See ya later, buddy.”</p><p>It had been the most relaxed and un-forced hanging out that William had ever experienced in his entire life, <em> literally </em>. He eventually dozed off that night while still wondering if maybe Pickles was as lonely as he was. </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The second day, Pickles showed up bright and early at 11am and they went to the Piggly Wiggly to load up on trash bags and Sharpies. Then, back at the condo, they once again got high before getting down to business. </p><p>“Holy creap,” Pickles exclaimed, holding up an expansive brassiere. “I think this thing could’a held up the Titanic up while it was tryin’ ta sink.”</p><p>Snorting out a laugh, William tossed another handful of his grandfather’s upsettingly discolored old briefs into the trash bag he’d hung up over the corner of a door like a limp basketball hoop. He had to pick most of it up off the floor and try again every time, but it still made it more fun to pretend he could make a two-pointer. “If you schee anything you like you can juscht keep it.”</p><p>Pickles burst into peals of laughter and draped the bra over the nearest lamp, where it stayed until William tripped during an undershirts-dunk and fell against the bed, which jerked and rattled the side tables, which tipped the lamp over with a crash. </p><p>“. . . Well, I wasch juscht going to throw it out anyway, I guessch.”</p><p>When they got hungry they ordered a couple of pizzas for lunch. William distantly heard Pickles chatting with the pizza guy for what seemed like a while, but he was too occupied trying to get all the shit on the kitchen table raked off and into still more trash bags. Seemed like it went on for a while. He even had some of the dusty glasses from a cupboard down and rinsed out for the sodas they’d ordered—the plan was to use them as mixers to make the couple remaining shots-worth of a whiskey bottle they’d found (of all places) wedged behind the oven. </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The rest of the week went by pretty much the same, filling up the condo complex’s dumpsters on a regular basis. William appreciated Pickles’ presence; between that and the physical labor of huffing and puffing out into the snow with heavy black bags, he barely thought about his childhood at all. </p><p>Except when Pickles pulled a couple of boxes out of the closet in the guest bedroom and called, “Hey, is this stuff yers?”</p><p>“Uhhh,” William hedged, looking up from the bookshelf he was clearing on the other side of the room. Over half of what was on the shelves were all the stupid little knick knacks his grandma had collected over the years, and the rest was the kind of shitty romance novels that Stella had always gone through like tissues. “What isch it?”</p><p>“Looks like. . . .” Pickles lifted the first item off the top, holding up a blue shirt sized to fit a <em> very </em>round little boy. “Heh, you were a cub scout?”</p><p>William scowled. “Yeah, till thosche dicksch kicked me out.”</p><p>“You can get kicked outta the cub scouts?”</p><p>“You can if everyone keepsch teasching you until you schtab the worscht of your bulliesch in the arm with a schpoon and it turnsch out hisch parentsch are both lawyersch.” He dropped the books in his hand onto the floor, then stomped over to where the other man knelt on the ground over the box and snatched the shirt out of Pickles’ hand. “We had to move becausche of that, I don’t know why sche fucking kept thisch.”</p><p>Stella and Thunderbolt Murderface had kept shockingly little of his childhood things. Nothing but these two unlabeled, forgotten boxes, as far as he could tell—though it made sense, he’d moved out maybe half a dozen moves ago and shit happened during moves, there was always some stuff that got misplaced. They’d never been particularly sentimental people anyway, so he didn’t know what he’d expected. </p><p>“Looks like the rest of the stuff in here’s old comic books,” Pickles said thoughtfully, leafing through some of the pages. “Dood, you read Archie? If you don’t want ‘em, I can totally find some nerds to sell these to. Collectors, y’know? They’ll put ‘em in plastic sleeves or whatever so they don’t get—Oh, hey hey hey, we gaht some old yearbooks in here!”</p><p>Avoiding Pickles’ hand, William put a boot on the hardcover that his new friend was just starting to open and said, flatly, “No.”</p><p>Pickles blinked up at him. “No?”</p><p>“No,” he repeated. </p><p>They stared at each other for a moment before Pickles shrugged and said, “Okie then, straight to the dumpster with this stuff then?”</p><p>William hesitated. “I’ll take them out to the car,” he muttered, finally moving his foot. Tossing the scout shirt back into the box and leaving Pickles with the comic books for the ‘sell’ bag, he stacked the other box on top and lifted from his back in a way that he was definitely going to regret later. His cheeks were burning self-consciously even in the cold outside air as he carried the boxes out, because he knew he was being <em> weird </em> about this. </p><p>There was . . . one thing that, apparently, he was still hoping to find, something he didn’t want a distraction from. When he’d taken off from his grandparents’ place, he hadn’t taken the only picture he’d ever owned of his mother. It was something he’d been pretending he didn’t feel guilty about for a long time, and that was private. </p><p>Plus, all of his school pictures had been awful. No one needed to see that. </p><p>Pickles didn’t seem to mind, though. When William went back in there wasn’t a pall of awkwardness or anything; they just went back to sorting through the mess. </p><p> </p><p>They did indeed find that teapot, tarnished as hell but otherwise as William remembered, as well as two short, handleless tea cups and saucers that went with it. Pickles took it and came back the next day with sixty bucks. Neither of them knew if that was a good price or not, but both were content to split the take. </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Every night, Pickles stuck around at the motel for a while. They smoked, watched random shit on TV. . . . Sometimes Pickles brought beer, sometimes harder stuff. They talked about random shit, like the difference between living in a nowhere town like Tomahawk versus William’s big city digs. But William had grown up in various shit towns just like this one, so he understood. </p><p>“Everybody knows everybody here, y’know? Like, fuck, I go to the grocery store it’s like, that chick the captain of the football team got pregnant sophomore year in aisle one, the guy who tried to give me a swirly in sixth grade but I kneed him in the balls and got away in aisle two. . . .'' Pickles trailed off, sloshing another serving of whiskey into his motel glass, and topping up William’s too. “I mean, all the jackoffs who were there to hear my voice crack in the middle of the fuckin’ school talent show still live in this stupid town. How’s a guy supposed ta live like that?”</p><p>“I do not know,” William replied. He had already reached the over-enunciating stage of drunkenness, which lay comfortably over him like a blanket. Every once in a while he realized that he was grinning—something he usually felt self-conscious about because of the gap between his front teeth, but it kept happening and Pickles hadn’t made fun of him for it once. “The only good thing about growing up wasch that we moved around a lot, scho I alwaysch knew I wouldn’t have to deal with each fresch crop of jackasschesch for very long.”</p><p>“I’ve lived in the same house my whole life, dood. Sometimes I feel like I’ll die there too.”</p><p>“That’sch brutal, man.” </p><p>It was just after midnight, and they were both sprawled side-by-side on the bed, propped up into vaguely sitting positions against the headboard while they passed the joint back and forth. The TV was on but it was just showing infomercials at this point—it was hard to see through the haze in the room, anyway. Outside, the wind was positively howling. </p><p>Pickles turned his head and looked over William to the window, looking out onto a blur of fuzzy gray darkness. “Huh. Well that don’t sound good.”</p><p>“Nope,” William agreed. </p><p>“Gonna be a shit drive back to the fucking basement,” he said with a grimace. </p><p>“Scho don’t go,” William said. “You’re already <em> here. </em>” He flopped a hand against his friend’s ribs for emphasis. “Crasch here, who the fuck caresch.”</p><p>It occurred to him, after he’d said that, that he had just said that. Of course he would rather Pickles crash in his motel room than into a snowbank somewhere—that would be bad, and it would really suck to lose reliable transportation in a place with weather like this—but there was only one bed. Which made the offer . . . kind of awkward. </p><p>Pickles just put the blunt in his hand, no big deal, and took a swig of whiskey. He was smaller than William, neither as tall nor as solidly built, but he had an impressive tolerance. Despite being the faster drinker, he seemed no more fucked up than usual. “Guess I could,” he mused, and glanced at William. “I can take the tub.”</p><p>“What?” William heard himself say. “We’re scharing the bed right now and there’sch plenty of room, just sleep here.” He put the blunt to his mouth, hand resting lazily against his mustache as he held it in place. His pulse was speeding up, and oops, fuck, he <em> wanted </em>Pickles to stay. The crossfade was starting to tug at him too, sleep beckoning, and he was already comfortable, didn’t want to get up or say goodbye. Suddenly he didn’t want to be alone all night as usual either, waiting on Pickles to drive over the next day and rescue him from shitty motel coffee. His flight back home was on the evening of the 24th, so all of this was incredibly temporary, but he didn’t care. “Juscht schtay.” </p><p>The offer—the request—hung in the air like smoke, drifting and winding this way and that as Pickles considered, his face slack and placid. After a minute, he shrugged and said, “Okie.” </p><p>Maybe there was a faint smile playing at the corners of his mouth, or maybe William was imagining it. Either way, it didn’t feel weird at all. </p><p>William, in his entire awkward, sullen, standoffish life, had never shared a bed with a guy. With anyone, really—all of his sexual encounters had been quick and to the point, a handjob or a mouth in the dark and then move on. He didn’t know the rules here, but he at least kicked off his boots onto the floor. </p><p>But Pickles was cool, and as with everything he didn’t blink an eye. (Maybe all the pot and booze had something to do with that, but still. It was appreciated.) He just wriggled haphazardly out of his own shoes and jeans and tossed his other layers across the room until he was down to just his y-fronts. Seeing that, William averted his eyes and hesitantly did away with his own clothes. As heavy as his head felt and as ready as he was for sleep, he was grateful for the freedom of being able to sleep in his boxers as usual . . . but he kept an undershirt on, self-conscious about his belly and the stupid tattoo that stretched across it like a banner. </p><p>One way or another they both ended up beneath the rumpled covers, where their body heat had already seeped down as far as the sheets hours ago. William threw his boot expertly at the light switch across the room and they were bathed in darkness, broken only by the flickering light of the TV still on, but set at low volume. White noise, backed by the sound of wind pushing the gently falling snow outside. </p><p>The last two things William was aware of as he nodded off were Pickles scooting closer until they were back to back, and a pleasant, unaccustomed warmth in his chest. </p>
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